Analysis of mobile business processes for the design of mobile information systems

Abstract

The adoption of mobile technologies into companies frequently follows a technology-driven approach without precise knowledge about the potential benefits that may be realised. Especially in larger organisations with complex business processes, a systematic procedure is required if a verifiable economic benefit is to be created by the use of mobile technologies. Therefore, the term "mobile business process", as well as requirements for information systems applied in such processes, are defined in this paper. Subsequently, we introduce a procedure for the systematical analysis of the distributed structure of a business process model in order to identify mobile sub-processes. For that purpose, the method Mobile Process Landscaping is used to decompose a process model into different levels of detail. The method aims to manage the complexity and limit the process analysis to the potentially mobile sub-processes from the beginning. The result of the analysis can be used on the one hand as a foundation for the redesign of the business processes and on the other hand for the requirements engineering of mobile information systems. An application of this method is shown by the example of business processes in the insurance industry. © Springer-Verlag 2004.